Why Bad Diets Feel So Good (the REWARD & Dopamine High of Diet Culture)

Here’s a run down of what we discussed in today’s episode: The Honeymoon Phase of Dieting Why Restriction Feels Rewarding Rapid Weight Loss: Water vs Fat Metabolic Adaptation Explained Symptom Relief and Elimination Diets Why Dieting Creates a Sense of Control Rigid vs Flexible Restraint The Power of External Validation Why Most Diets Eventually Fail How to Break the Diet Cycle Building Sustainable Eating Habits The Hunger Crushing Combo Approach References: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/014976349500033B https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3124340/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306452223000416 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277539521001217 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1471015314000221 https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(19)30338-6/abstract https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10865-016-9717-y Disclaimer: The content in this episode is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is never a substitute for medical advice. If you’re struggling with with your mental or physical health, please work one on one with a health care provider. If you have heard yourself in our discussion today, and are looking for support, contact the free NEDIC helpline at 1-866-NEDIC-20 or go to eatingdisorderhope.com. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✨ Reach Your Weight & Health Goals — Without Dieting! Pre-order The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, Abbey’s revolutionary additive approach to eating well. Learn how to boost satiety, stabilize blood sugars, reduce disease risk, and improve your relationship with food — all while getting the best nutrient bang for your caloric buck. With 400+ research citations, cheat sheets, evidence-based actionable tips, meal plans, and adaptable recipes, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method is the only nutrition bible you’ll ever need. 👉 Pre-order today! 🛒 Where to Purchase: Amazon Barnes & Noble Amazon Kindle Apple Books Google Play Kobo Apple Books (Audiobook) Audible abbeyskitchen.com/hunger-crushing-combo • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •✉️ Subscribe to My Newsletters: Abbey’s Kitchen Newsletter 📘 Check out my FREE E-Books: Hunger Crushing Combo™ E-Book Protein 101 E-Book 👋 Follow me! Instagram: @abbeyskitchen TikTok: @abbeyskitchen YouTube: @AbbeysKitchen Blog: abbeyskitchen.com Book: The Mindful Glow Cookbook • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen — and leave us a review! It really helps support the show ❤️ 💬 If you liked this podcast, please like, follow, and leave a review — and let me know who you’d love to hear about next! ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:31Abbey Sharp?

  So one of the big rewards of that early honeymoon phase is the feeling that I am being the kind of person that diet culture celebrates. Disciplined, controlled, respectable, maybe even superior to the version of myself who was eating more freely before. So it's not just offering the promise of a different body, it is offering a temporary identity upgrade.

• 1:01Abbey Sharp?

  Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience, and help you achieve food freedom for good.

• 1:14Abbey Sharp?

  If you've been around here for a while, you probably know that I am a vocal opponent of really any kind of "diet" that requires you to completely overhaul your life. Whether you are jumping into full-out carnivore or raw-dogging the latest cleanse, the research consistently shows that any kind of extreme restriction almost always backfires. And this is one of the reasons why I developed my additive framework, the Hunger Crush and Combo Method. Because we know that when we focus on adding instead of restricting, we avoid the scarcity mentality that leads you to call it quits. That said, I know how persuasive

• 1:57Abbey Sharp?

  a lot of these influencer-endorsed diets are. We see people online who are claiming that as soon as they cut out all the plants or all chewable foods or basically stopped eating after 3pm that all of their problems disappeared. The brain fog, the acne, the bloating. So if some of us are struggling with similar ailments, of course, we're going to feel drawn to these persuasive pitches. But if any of these diets were truly the panacea for all that ails you, why wouldn't they be more intuitive to maintain? And why, after being brutally and painfully burned by diet after diet after diet,

• 2:41Abbey Sharp?

  we crawl back into the arms of diet culture again and again? So today, we're diving into why diets can feel so, so, so good, at least in the beginning. We're going to unpack the psychological reward cycle of dieting and why it can keep pulling us back in even when we've received nothing but agony and frustration from every attempt before. Now, a quick reminder that we chat a lot about sustainable weight loss and diets that you can actually stick to for life in my bestselling book, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method. So I'd love if you would check that out in the link in the description to order. And if you already have had a chance to read it, I really would appreciate if you'd leave me a five-star review on Amazon

• 3:25Abbey Sharp?

  or Goodreads because it really does make a massive difference in the success of the book. All right, friends, let's get into it.

• 3:36Abbey Sharp?

  Okay, so I want to start with a little visualization exercise. So just close your eyes for a minute and think about your first diet. Maybe it was Weight Watchers or Whole30 or something fringe that you read in a celebrity tabloid magazine. Now, think about your intentions for sticking to that diet long term and your hope of having it completely transform your life. Now reflect on what life felt like physically, emotionally, and socially when you were in that first one or two weeks of all-in commitment. This is generally what we call the honeymoon phase of dieting. And it's this early, exciting, elating phase.

• 4:20Abbey Sharp?

  That keeps a lot of folks colloquially addicted to coming on and off diets their whole life. And there's actual science to explain why we love dieting more than making lifestyle changes that actually improve our health long term. And you really need to understand the psychological and physical hooks if you want to overcome them. So let's start in the brain and break down how diets provide our brain with reward. If you're a longtime subby of mine, or maybe just like have been on a lot of diets, it might seem totally wild to imagine this like idea that a diet, which by very definition is a restrictive state, could actually be serving as a reward. But just stay with me for a

• 5:05Abbey Sharp?

  sec. Foods that have high hedonic value, AKA taste really, really good, largely from a combination of fat and sugar, interact with brain systems that help you learn what is valuable, motivate you to get it again, and remember cues that predict it. So these highly palatable foods release dopamine in the reward centers of the brain, which then stamps in the message, this is important, do this again. In the diet world, hedonic foods are generally on the no-no list. So how could we possibly elicit that same sense

• 5:42Abbey Sharp?

  of reward from cutting them out? Can restriction itself become reinforcing? The short answer is, well, yes, absolutely. Not because your brain is like, wow, I just like love being hangry, but rather that the brain is learning that restriction, especially in that early phase, can predict outcomes that are very, very rewarding to us. So what are those dieting honeymoon phase outcomes? And why don't they stick around to help us out long term? Well, the first might be seeing the number on the scale abruptly go down. One of the most

• 6:22Abbey Sharp?

  common ways that researchers describe early restriction is as a goal-directed behavior. You do something. You get a valued outcome like weight loss and your brain learns, ooh, okay, that worked. You see it on your feed all of the time. Like some creator starts a keto diet or goes on some kind of sugar cleanse and their face looks slimmer after just like 10 days. Like wow, that quickie outcome is wildly motivating. But here's the uncomfortable truth. Any diet that creates a calorie deficit will work in the honeymoon phase when you have high motivation to perfectly adhere to the rules. Moreover, a lot of early weight loss in any diet

• 7:06Abbey Sharp?

  is actually water weight, not fat, especially with lower carb diets like keto or carnivore. And that drop can be very fast and it can be very dramatic. Like I'm talking five pounds in mere hours to days. This is often framed in the literature of the illusion of easy weight loss. But fat loss is a far slower biological process that can take weeks, if not even more, to see on the scale. And when there is some legit fat loss in play, our body fights back. And this is when we need to talk about metabolic adaptation. When we lose actual

• 7:45Abbey Sharp?

  tissue like fat or lean mass, our body doesn't just passively go, okay, cool, let's just keep going. It actively pushes back. And this is not a failure of willpower. It is our body legit panicking, trying to maintain safe homeostasis. So our hunger hormones like ghrelin ramp up and our satiety hormone leptin quiets down, leaving us with this raging food noise and hunger that we didn't feel during the honeymoon phase when our body hadn't yet clocked its existential threat. We also see a modest decline in basal metabolic rate and a significant reduction in unconscious

• 8:30Abbey Sharp?

  movement or meat. So even if you think, hey, I'm doing the same exercises I did in week one, your total daily burn will be quietly dropping. The more extreme and restrictive the diet, the harder our body clamps down, which makes binging, regaining, or at least just simply stalling, the uncomfortable reality for most folks. Another related rewarding outcome is that you may physically be feeling better. A lot of popular, highly restrictive diets that remove many different types of foods, like cleanses or carnivore, promise to eliminate things like bloating, acne, IBS, or other objectively obvious symptoms.

• 9:15Abbey Sharp?

  The truth is, most of these types of symptoms are related to some kind of sensitivity to one or perhaps a small number of foods. Maybe it's a certain FODMAP, or gluten, or dairy, or simply a response to eating an excess of refined sugars. And while most proponents of these diets will insist that there is something almost magical about the specific prescribed foods that is healing you from the inside out, the reality is that when your diet is reduced down to a handful of quote-unquote "clean" options, inevitably, you're going to be capturing that one triggering ingredient along with perhaps hundreds of others that did you no harm.

• 10:00Abbey Sharp?

  So people do these cleanses or massive diet overhauls. They feel better pretty quickly, and they think, "Yeah, this diet is the secret to symptom remission." But actually, this is literally just like phase one of a massive elimination diet, the goal of which should never be to avoid all potential triggers for life, but to identify and eliminate only the one or few foods that are causing harm. Staying on step one of an elimination diet for life is a recipe for nutritional deficiencies, where that initial symptom relief is soon overrun by far more sinister,

• 10:44Abbey Sharp?

  negative, long-term effects. Now, looking inward, one of the most satisfying reward themes that we see come up in the literature is that early dieting can give us a temporary sense of control, discipline, and mastery. Dining itself, with its rules to follow and foods to avoid, is an activity of control. So in those first few weeks of the diet, when everything is hunky-dory, we get to experience a version of ourselves that is organized, capable, and on track. And this is where diet culture adds fuel to the fire. Because diet culture does not present control and discipline as neutral skills.

• 11:29Abbey Sharp?

  It moralizes them. Fitness gets framed as a moral virtue, while eating "well," resisting temptation, and sticking to the plan gets framed as evidence that you are responsible, worthy, and good. So one of the big rewards of that early honeymoon phase is the feeling that I am being the kind of person that diet culture celebrates. Disciplined, controlled, respectable, maybe even superior to the version of myself who was eating more freely before. So it's not just offering the promise of a different body. It is offering a temporary identity upgrade.

• 12:11Speaker 02

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• 12:52Abbey Sharp?

  Now, the problem with this long term is that your new identity hinges on absolute perfection and rigid control. According to behavioral research, rigid control is all or nothing. So you're either following the diet to a T without deviation, or you're in an active binge saying, Diet starts again tomorrow. In contrast, flexible control is more moderate and adaptable. So maybe you're committed to reducing your alcohol consumption. But hey, it was your hubby's birthday, so champagne was popped. Reviews and empirical papers have found that rigid control is more closely linked to overeating, disinhibition, and poor psychological outcomes,

• 13:37Abbey Sharp?

  whereas more flexible approaches tend to be a lot more sustainable. So if the reward is, I feel amazing when I'm perfectly in control, that is going to set you up for trouble the minute real life enters the chat. There's also the reward that we receive from external validation and praise. This one really does matter a lot because weight loss does not happen in a vacuum. It is called diet culture for a reason because we live, eat, and breathe in it. And the social code reinforces that dieting is good and you are a good human for dieting. Research also suggests that when we get some kind of approval,

• 14:21Abbey Sharp?

  admiration, or validation from other people for your diet, whether it's a compliment on your actual weight loss or just a, hey, good for you for being so disciplined. That social reward serves to strengthen the behavior. And this is particularly problematic when we're talking about disordered eating and eating disorder behaviors. But it can also be an issue even if the weight loss behaviors are more moderate or even seen as quote-unquote "healthy." This is because external praise teaches us to chase being admired, not necessarily to build a way of eating that we can actually live with. It may help launch a diet off the ground,

• 15:05Abbey Sharp?

  but it is a very poor long-term fuel source because it is conditional, inconsistent, and dependent on other people continuing to notice and reward your restraint. Once that approval fades, because I don't know, like, people get used to you being smaller or once that diet becomes harder to perform perfectly, the motivation often starts to crumble too. And this is explained by research on weight control motivation that has found that more autonomous motivation, meaning behaviors that feel self endorsed and personally meaningful, is associated with better adherence and better maintained weight loss than more controlled motivation,

• 15:48Abbey Sharp?

  which depends on pressure, approval, or external evaluation. In other words, external validation can keep you attached to the performance of dieting more than the reality of living it. Because praise is linked to the parts that people can actually see. So the shrinking body, the quote unquote good food choices, the discipline story. But for even behaviors to change long term, we need to internalize experiences that are a lot less glamorous and sexy. So flexibility, consistency, self trust, and being able to adapt when life gets messy. So if we're looking at this from 40 feet, a lot of the reward of a new diet is front loaded.

• 16:32Abbey Sharp?

  So motivation is high, rules are clear, the scale is rapidly dropping, people are noticing. But the resistance is backloaded because metabolism adapts, hunger rages, energy expenditure declines, and validation dries up. So the same behavior that felt very easy and rewarding early on becomes much harder and less rewarding to maintain. And when we binge or quit or regain that weight, we internalize it as an us problem. We feel ashamed that we just were not disciplined enough. And then that dip in self confidence and affect drives us into the arms of the next diet,

• 17:15Abbey Sharp?

  hoping to be lifted out of the gutter on another honeymoon high. This is a cycle that so many of you listening right now have surely been trapped in for a lot of your life. And if you're listening right now, you probably know that this cycle has not served you. So the question Shouldn't be, how do I find the perfect diet that I can stick to this time? It should be, how do I stop relying on a system that was really never designed to be sustainable in the first place? Because if the reward is front loaded and the resistance is inevitable, then the goal is not to get better at surviving the crash. It's to build an approach that doesn't require a crash at all. And that's exactly what we are going to get into next.

• 18:00Abbey Sharp?

  So here are my top tips for escaping the diet starts again tomorrow cycle. Number one, eat in a way that works with, not against your biology. Metabolic adaptation means hunger and food noise will increase during restriction. That is not a flaw of yours. That is just basic physiology. And this is exactly why my hunger crushing combo method works. Fiber, protein and healthy fats have been shown to help improve satiety, especially when in a calorie deficit. So aim for 20 to 30% of your total calories to come from protein, at least 30 grams of fiber per day from high volume, low calorie density plant foods,

• 18:42Abbey Sharp?

  and lean on whole food healthy fats that double as protein or fiber like avocado or salmon. Also avoid aggressive calorie deficits because the research shows that aiming for 0.5 to 1% weight loss per week is ideal for reducing the risk of muscle loss and diet relapse. Number two, forego those all or nothing rules in favor of rebuilding flexibility and body trust. One of the most consistent findings in the literature is that rigid restraint, so like I'm either perfect or I failed, is linked with overeating and dropout, while flexible restraint is associated with better long-term outcomes.

• 19:25Abbey Sharp?

  When your diet positions food in black and white terms, so sugar is bad and even a lick of it is a failure, the moment that life happens and your boss's wife serves you a decadent slice of chocolate cake that she made, while your body is physically and emotionally in a State a scarcity, you just cannot help but say, fuck it, diet's over. Might as well now finish everyone else's leftover frosting too. Instead of this all or nothing thinking, try asking yourself, how can I make this meal work right now? That might mean just having a few bites or even eating the whole plate because uh yum, chocolate cake does taste really good, but you'll be better equipped to get back on track the next day.

• 20:10Abbey Sharp?

  If you've always struggled with this dichotomous thinking around foods, I highly recommend spending some time with my bestselling book, The Hunger Crushing Compil Method. When we focus on adding, not restricting, we're able to avoid the scarcity mentality that triggers hyper fixation, binging, and yo-yo dieting, while more spontaneously and effortlessly creating a calorie deficit. In the book, I offer loads of tips for how to dress up previously forbidden foods with hunger crushing compounds to encourage that flexible restraint that leads to long-term weight loss success. Tip number three, we need to shift from external validation to internal autonomous motivation.

• 20:54Abbey Sharp?

  Now, I'm not here to shame anyone who just wants to lose 10 pounds for their wedding or make their ex jealous after a spicy breakup, but research from self-determination theory shows that people are more likely to sustain behavior change when motivation is autonomous, AKA personally meaningful, rather than controlled, AKA driven by pressure, guilt, or approval. So instead of, I want people to notice my weight loss, we can try to build in more autonomous motivations like, I want my habits to reflect how I value myself, not how I want to be perceived. And finally, tip number four, stop chasing fast physical changes

• 21:38Abbey Sharp?

  and focus instead on behaviors that are built for real life. Most diets are designed to only work when you are your most motivated, least stressed, highly controlled self. But a good diet has to work. When you are tired and you're busy or you're social, you're emotional, or when you are not seeing the results you expect or want. So a great reframe from how much did the scale drop this week could be, did I eat in a way that I could realistically repeat next month? Or did my exercise this week leave me feeling more energized or more depleted? Would I still be able to eat a version of this diet without crashing out while I'm on vacation in six months' time?

• 22:21Abbey Sharp?

  Sustainable weight change isn't about finding a plan that you can follow perfectly for a few weeks. It's about building a way of eating that you don't need to escape from. And that brings me to the end of the episode. So I really do hope that this information helps you better understand your body and that you can give yourself grace if you've been stuck in the diet cycle for most of your life. It is truly such a battle, but you really do not need to fight this for the rest of your life. Also, a quick reminder that my book, The Hunger Crushing Combo Method, is on shelves now, and it is your go-to guide for eating well according to any goal or health condition. There are chapters and tips for letting go of diet culture and using the Hunger Crushing

• 23:06Abbey Sharp?

  Combo Method for weight loss, which you may enjoy if you're related to this episode. Finally, don't forget to rate this podcast five stars because it really does help me out, and I will see you next Tuesday for more science-backed conversations. Signing off with Science and SaaS, I'm Abbey Sharp. Thanks for listening.

• 23:32Speaker 03

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